Half German on my mother's side and in area where I grew up, was a large nest of em. Among other things, one of their holiday traditions was they made a spice heavy Christmas bread. I'm aware of several variations, but common theme among them was in addition to the nuts and fruit, they were spice heavy. Like fennel, caraway, cardamon, anise, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, all spice, ginger etc, .......and lots of it.

For some reason, there doesn't seem to be any such thing any other place on the planet, including areas of Germany where they came from. Christmas and winter holiday breads with fruits and nuts......yes. Spice heavy like that? No.

Was this unique to them or is there something like this elsewhere?

When I was in germany they called it stollen

I've seen the recipe / ingredients lists and while a stollen has some spice in it, nothing like this. It's like they empty out the spice rack and dump the whole works in.

I know grandma made a fruit bread like you said but it was soaked in spiced rum, it has been many years since I had any and didn’t care for the fruit in it, so it may not have been the same thing or it was the rum that made it bite I’m not sure anymore.

Stollen, like many recipes, is made according to passed down "family" preferences in personal taste. :-)

We make a German bread for Christmas every year called Givenitsa, or something like that. One variation filled with a poppyseed filling and the other with caramelized pecans.

You can buy a couple of types of stollen here at Aldi. They are not to bad and I eat my may though a few of those every christmas season.

To give one an idea of the spice load, the original recipe called for:

3 oz Fennel
3 oz caraway
3 oz coriander
3 oz anise
2 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg
1 tsp each ground cloves, allspice and ginger

That makes about 8 pie pan sized loafs.

The spice bill alone is almost prohibitive to make it, not to mention a lot of those spices don't mate up well with each other. Eating it is an acquired taste.

Still wonder where they got the idea for this, as it does not seem to exist anywhere else.

I an actually in a German class right now and we are discussing baking / cooking in german

It is extremely common in Germany to have long complex recepies with ingredients we normally don't use especially in breads and cookies. They also lean away from the use of a lot of sugar in my opinion.

Although I love a lot of kinds of foods stollen that my family makes I cannot stand

Clemke, once you speak German well, it should sound like a typewriter wrapped in tin foil being kicked down a spiral staircase.

OK, no ideas on the christmas bread.

What about Hack? Heard about it.....never seen it. Was of the opinion this bunch made it from beef.

And how many takers on limburger cheese? I do remember that. Big plate of it on a kitchen table at parties.

Out back were big wash tubs full of ice cold beer for the adults and pop for the kids. They were some frugal Germans but did enjoy a good party now and then.

I see your ingredients and they resemble the spices used in sausage recipes, so begin good German people they would have those around and I bet that’s why they used them now to make it that strong it maybe a regional thing.

That's hilarious !

Hayday , you mentioned Hack. My wife makes what she calls Hecka. It has cabbage , ground beef, onion. and likely other spices. Cooked togather. I really like it. old 243

From what I was told, Hack is basically raw ground meat......with some salt and pepper. Eat it on a cracker. Internet seems to think it is / was made from pork. Version I heard about was made from beef.

I've had raw hamburger from a just killed home butchered steer. No way I'd do that with walmart mystery meat or something.

up here we call it raw dog, lots of seasoning they eat it on crackers, try cooking it one time and couldn't eat it there was too much salt.